The other thread is a mess, thanks to me releasing things before I should, so I'm starting this one. Currently this kit is in beta testing.

Description

This kit gives the user the ability to make changes to a firmware image without recompiling the firmware sources. It works by extracting the firmware into its component parts, then extracting the squashfs-lzma based file system (other file systems can be supported with tweaks). The user can then make modifications to the extracted file system, then rebuild the firmware image.

How much memory do you think this would save? let's say i use dd-wrt standard with QoS, UPNP, telnet and dnsmasq. is there really so much space to save or is this more for v5 routers with smaller memory?

How much memory do you think this would save? let's say i use dd-wrt standard with QoS, UPNP, telnet and dnsmasq. is there really so much space to save or is this more for v5 routers with smaller memory?

This technique isn't useful for just micro builds. It is helpful for almost anyone not wanting to run a default build of DD-WRT. You can use it to reduce the number of packages, increase the number of packages, or just change things around a bit (scripts, web UI, whatever..). Even for routers where you have extra ROM space already,, by pre-installing things you save ROM space since they are MUCH better compressed than if installed after you flash the firmware.

How much ROM space to save by chopping unused services? Well, if you JUST chopped PPP, PPPOE, and PPTP you'll save around 200KB. Removing specialized stuff like kaid would save a shitload more from the standard build. As far as RAM use, it all depends on what you have actually running more than what you have installed.

Once this kit gets known it will be a big deal to many people. It's so easy to use, works so well, and is so powerful.

How much memory do you think this would save? let's say i use dd-wrt standard with QoS, UPNP, telnet and dnsmasq. is there really so much space to save or is this more for v5 routers with smaller memory?

This technique isn't useful for just micro builds. It is helpful for almost anyone not wanting to run a default build of DD-WRT. You can use it to reduce the number of packages, increase the number of packages, or just change things around a bit (scripts, web UI, whatever..). Even for routers where you have extra ROM space already,, by pre-installing things you save ROM space since they are MUCH better compressed than if installed after you flash the firmware.

How much space to save by chopping unused services? Well, if you JUST chopped PPP, PPPOE, and PPTP you'll save around 200KB. As far as RAM use, it all depends on what you have actually running more than what you have installed.

Once this kit gets known it will be a big deal to many people. It's so easy to use, works so well, and is so powerful.

Well that sounds very good, but if it doesnt save ram I wont need it myself

Sounds fantastic! Exactly what I was waiting for Recompiling isn't that funny if you just want to change a config file (hehe, finally I will have /mmc/ as standard value für ipkg^^)!

I'll try it once I've made sure my wrt will survive the "surgery". It shouldn't hurt the bootloader but you never know Attaching the jtag isn't that hard after all and while doing so I can take care of the serial port(s) I wanted to add too ;)

The script could examine if the uname returns value Darwin, and act accordingly. That would be great. On the other hand, byteswap.h seems to be missing on my computer. I wonder if that inhibits the use.

I've never tried to install under MAC OS X(I almost didn't notice your subject line). I think to missing Linux Header Files. Maybe I can tweak it so that it works ok, but I don't have a MAC OS X system to test on. If you find some packages that allow it to work, please let me know. If you are a coder, you may be able to change extfirmware.c and trx.c to remove any dependencies on the problematic header files (there might not even be any, I need to look.. if there are, should be easy to take care of).

If you can give me a shell on a MAC OS X box, I'm happy to with with it. On MAC OS X, uname==Darwin then ? So this is a reliable way to detect if the platform is MAC OS X?

UPDATE: I've just completed a series of changes intended to increase compatibility with non-linux systems. After testing, I'll release this new build as v0.20.

I'll try it once I've made sure my wrt will survive the "surgery". It shouldn't hurt the bootloader but you never know Attaching the jtag isn't that hard after all and while doing so I can take care of the serial port(s) I wanted to add too

Yes, this is something I need to document. You can definitely screw up the firmware so your unit doesn't boot successfully, but the worst case scenario is usually just that you have to TFTP a new firmware in the boot_wait period. You're right, the CFE should not be affected. You won't regret adding a serial port, I can't live without one now that I've had one.

Wow, many thanks for this tool. It's much faster than rebuilding the full sources. Now, OpenWRT is obsolet for me.

Again. Many, many thanks db90h!

I'm glad you have found this useful. I've been very excited about this development, and kind of waiting for people to take notice. It will change entire landscape of DD-WRT I think as now ANYBODY can make their own custom firmwares. I played around a bit with mixing n' matching packages/binaries from different DD-WRT versions and it works great.

The next thing I might do is distribute a build environment that allows people to easily port new packages to DD-WRT. It will basically just build DD-WRT ready compatible executables for whatever platform (MIPSL for example). A few changes to the OpenWrt build root and you can use it, including all the packages that have been ported to it. Of course, if you want to do static links you can for sure use any OpenWrt pacakge, and many work already despite the sometimes different in kernel version.

But now i have another question. How can I make the router run CGI and .PL files. The CGI file is 244 Kb. I know the router runs .cgi files becuase ther is a file 192.168.1.1/apply.cgi I tried uploading the change firmware with the the but it won't work. Well the firmaware works but not the file. Do you know how??
Thx

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